“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” Elie Wiesel

Toward the end of June this year I was introduced to Kella Hanna-Wayne’s (Yopp) work via a Facebook link shared by my colleague and friend, Michael Dickel, which he in turn received from his daughter. I subsequently included info on Kella and her post HERE. That’s the way the world moves these days. Though technology and social networking are mixed blessings in some respects, they’re effective tools for people like Kella and I who have work to which we are committed but deal everyday with serious physical disabilities that constrain (in my case prohibit) activity outside the home.

The link of which I speak was to a post in which Kella provided some well-considered guidelines and resources for protesting the migrant travesties on the U.S. Southern Border. As I investigated Kella’s site, I was impressed with her thoroughness and clarity. I wrote to her about doing an interview on The Poet by Day for our activist poets, writers, and friends. She agreed. Here it is. Read on. / J.D.

JAMIE: Kella, you have taken on such a range of causes, all of them important, critical. Not everyone can do that. I hear people talk about “compassion burnout,” which is understandable but irritating. It’s a luxury oppressed people don’t have. I usually respond with “pick a cause. Pick one cause and focus on that.” What’s your advice?

KELLA: I think all of us, including activists, can agree that social justice is simply overwhelming. There are so many causes, there’s so much to learn about every cause, and to make things even more complicated, the needs of each cause are constantly progressing and changing. It’s a lot to keep up with.

But one of the fundamental ideas behind my blog is that there are a basic set of guidelines that you can follow that will help you understand any source of oppression. Instead of learning about male privilege, and then white privilege, and then financial privilege, why not learn how the concept of privilege works so that you can apply it to any new cause you learn about? There are so many challenges marginalized groups face that they have in common with one another: microaggressions, oppressive language, policing of their emotions/bodies, even difficulty accessing medical care. I think that if you learn the functionality of the oppressive systems that are at work and all the basic components of social justice, it enables you to support these groups of people much more effectively and thoroughly than if you were trying to learn one cause at a time from scratch.

I also think that even if you do choose to focus primarily on one cause, it’s important to be aware of the basics of the other ones because social justice issues are all inextricably connected to each other and ignoring the way intersectionality impacts the problems that we’re tackling tends to leave holes in our solutions.

JAMIE:What then are the steps activists can take to minimize burnout?

KELLA: No matter how narrow your focus, social justice issues are far bigger than any one person can solve. Because activism has to be a collective effort, I think it’s really important to recognize that completely fixing the problem is an impossible standard to hold yourself to. You are one piece in a much larger effort to create change. Even when you are focusing on what is within your personal power, you have to be realistic about what you can actually accomplish. If there are 20 different tasks that you could do as an activist and each one is individually within your ability to do, it’s likely doing all 20 of them is not. You have to choose what it is that you are going to do.

To make that choice, I recommend focusing on forms of activism that…

Are sustainable so that you can continue to do them over time

Are empowering to you so that you feel motivated to continue

Aren’t deeply upsetting or draining in such a way that the cost of the task is greater than the positive impact the action has

Feel right to you.

Which forms of activism meet those criteria is going to be different for everyone. For example, I believe that calling your representatives is an effective way to impact the future of our country but I find making phone calls incredibly anxiety-inducing and I have to spend a lot of energy to get myself to make one. That’s not a good use of my resources. On the other hand, writing comes easily to me, I find it rewarding, and it’s something that a lot of other people can’t contribute. I can accomplish way more by writing on behalf of activism than I could if I were using the same amount of resources to make phone calls. Whenever I feel the push to do more for a cause, I re-center on the importance of my writing and how much I’m offering in the work I already do.

A philosophy I carry around with me wherever I go is that everyone has something of value to offer. You have to find what your offering is.

JAMIE: Tell us about Yopp Academy.

KELLA: Yopp Academy is a section of my blog that focuses on educational material. It’s where I’m outlining that basic set of social justice guidelines I mentioned earlier.

To distinguish the amount of prior knowledge that’s needed to understand a given article, I used a college-style course numbering system, so articles are sorted into 100 level, 200 level, 300 level, etc. If you’re brand new to social justice, you start with the 100 level articles and work your way up. It really does function like a set of college courses in that articles of higher levels directly reference ideas from the level 100 articles, so the more of them you read together, the better your understanding will be of the subject as a whole.

The articles I have published currently only go up to level 300 because I’ve been putting my focus on establishing all the basic concepts before adding more advanced stuff. I’m currently working on a lesson plan of over 40 educational articles to serve as a foundation of knowledge which you can use regardless of your level of involvement with activism, which will include higher-level articles in the future.

JAMIE:Tell us about your Facebook debates.

KELLA: I’ve always had a lot of friends on facebook who are into social justice and some of them have such large friends list that anytime they posted something controversial, it would spark a discussion/debate. I started jumping into these discussions and offering my opinion and I got a reputation for being good at explaining basic social justice concepts to people who weren’t familiar with them and for clearly outlining the problems in someone else’s argument.

I used Facebook debates to practice my writing, increase my own understanding of social justice, it introduced me to a bunch of other amazing people that cared about the same things, and because managing my disability/mental illnesses made traditional activism prohibitive, it gave me a way to be involved in causes I cared about. Spending so much time arguing with people who I disagreed with also gave me a lot of insight into the places people were most likely to have holes in their understanding of our social systems which in turn has really informed the content and the structure of my blog. I often say the reason I started a blog in the first place was that I got tired of writing out the same explanations/arguments over and over again, and just wanted to write out the article once to link to every time I came across the same issue again.

I know I differ from a lot of people in that I believe debates on social media, even the “unproductive” ones, are an important branch of activism. Not only do they spread information to larger audiences of people (while only 10 people might be commenting, 1,000 could be reading the comments) but they serve as a means of socializing bigots to understand that their bigotry will be met with hassle and frustration rather than easy acceptance like they’re used to. I think that practice has a lot more power than people think it does.

JAMIE: So many people – like you and me – live with chronic, even catastrophic, illness. What can these illnesses teach us about social justice and advocacy?

KELLA: If you hold a conference for activism regarding chronic illness but you organize it in a similar way that you would any other business conference, your collection of speakers, organizers, and attendants are likely to be mostly healthy people rather than chronically ill people. If it’s energy-intensive to leave your house/travel, if you need frequent breaks or a special housing set up, if you have extensive food restrictions or you need to hire a carer to accompany you, it’s going to be very difficult, resource costly, and risky to go to a conference that healthy people can attend with ease. Even in attempting to center the chronically ill, if you organize from the perspective of a healthy person, you will leave chronically ill out of their own activism. That’s because the default systems that we have in place for most aspects of society make it very difficult for chronically ill people to participate let alone succeed.

Anytime you design a solution for the social issues chronically ill people face, you have to start by adapting your mindset and prioritizing accommodation of an experience that you’re not familiar with, or you’ll fail at your advocacy from the beginning.

And this idea is not at all exclusive to chronic illness. You see the same problem with white people organizing on behalf of people of color, cis people organizing for trans people, abled people organizing for disabled people, etc. You have to go in understanding that in order for your advocacy to be successful, you have to dismantle the relevant oppressive systems that are within your scope of power and create new systems, a new foundation before you attempt to build any kind of structure on top.

JAMIE: Your site is about eighteen months old as we work on this post. What are the goals for the next couple of years?

KELLA: I’m still very much working out what my ideal version of Yopp would be or what I want it to accomplish but so far, my concrete plans are:

Switch over to a new, more modern and accessible website

Finish writing the basic building blocks for Yopp Academy (all 40 of them!!)

KELLA HANNA-WAYNE (Yopp) is a disabled, chronically/mentally ill freelance writer who is the editor, publisher, and main writer for Yopp, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights education, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression; and for GlutenFreeNom.Com, a resource for learning the basics of gluten-free cooking and baking. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine blog, Multiamory, Architrave Press and is forthcoming in a chapter of the book Twice Exceptional (2e) Beyond Learning Disabilities: Gifted Persons with Physical Disabilities. For fun, Kella organizes and DJ’s an argentine tango dancing event, bakes gluten-free masterpieces, sings loudly along with pop music, and makes cat noises. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Medium, and Instagram.

ABOUT

Jamie Dedes. I’m a Lebanese-American freelance writer, poet, content editor, blogger and the mother of a world-class actor and mother-in-law of a stellar writer/photographer. No grandchildren, but my grandkitty, Dahlia, rocks big time. I am hopelessly in love with nature and all her creatures. In another lifetime, I was a columnist, a publicist, and an associate editor to a regional employment publication. I’ve had to reinvent myself to accommodate scarred lungs, pulmonary hypertension, right-sided heart failure, connective tissue disease, and a rare managed but incurable blood cancer. The gift in this is time for my primary love: literature. I study/read/write from a comfy bed where I’ve carved out a busy life writing feature articles, short stories, and poetry and managing The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.

Recent and Upcoming in Digital Publications* The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice, August 11, 2019 / This short story is dedicated to all refugees. That would be one in every 113 people. * Five poems, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019 *From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems), July 2019 * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review, July 2019 *Three poems, Our Poetry Archive, September 2019

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.

“Tygpress.com is temporarily out of service due to technical issues. will be back soon…

Tygpress.com was created with an intention to create a blog search site , but due to some techical issues, full contents of respective sites were being displayed instead of just excerpts as intended. We thank the complainants for bringing this issue to our notice and We are extremely sorry to the content owners.” tygpress.com

Here’s the original post published on August 7 for those who didn’t read it. WordPress update is below.

Tygpress.com was founded in June 2018 and is an aggregating site with posts from many of our blogs as its total content. At the time of this writing, the site is blocked and all you will see if you go to Tygpress.com is the statement I’ve included above.

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So many kind and concerned bloggers have sent me alerts, which I appreciate. Thank you! Every post of mine was appropriated. I know it’s disconcerting (angering) and frustrating. This is not an expert opinion, but I have to say first that I think our copyrights are intact. I don’t think that’s an issue, though understandably it’s a primary concern. I noted that wherever there was a copyright notice by the content originator, it was included. On my site, I make conspicuous use of copyright for my own work and that of others and for this very reason. I have no worries about my fellow poets, writers and bloggers, it’s these wild-cards that come up that are a concern.

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If you feel your copyright is compromised you can file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Takedown. Details on that are HERE.

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I am as I write this awaiting an update from WordPress, which I’ll add to this post when and if one comes in. Having said that, Tygpress.com is not hosted by WordPress, so WordPress can’t take down the site. There are probably some things it can do. I hope we’ll find out. Meanwhile …

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Digital Ocean is the host and you can email them with your complaint at dmac@digitalocean.com and let them know you want your work deleted from the Tygpress.com and Tygpress.com blocked from stealing your posts in the future should Tygress.com become active again.

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The Domain Name is hosted by Go Daddy.

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The site is owned by a gentleman from Kamataka, Bengaluru, India. It purportedly earns $24.00 U.S. a day and has an estimated value of $8,640.00 U.S. according to a couple of website stat and valuation sites and who knows how accurate these are.

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I hope this is helpful. Feel free to add your thoughts and comments below.

WordPress response received today. There’s really nothing here we didn’t know, but it does reassure that WordPress is on it.

Fenton (Automattic)

Aug 13, 21:53 UTC

We also filed a complaint with their host Digital Ocean, and I believe many other WordPress.com bloggers whose work was copied did as well.

As of last week, it appeared the owner of Tygpress.com had voluntarily taken the site offline as a reaction to the complaints they had received, citing “technical issues” which they say ” full contents of respective sites were being displayed instead of just excerpts as intended.” As I believe you already saw.

It remains in this state today. We can take another look if the site returns and continues abusive practices, but there is no further action for us to take at this time with the site fully offline.

Recent in digital publications:
* Five by Jamie Dedes, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)(July 2019)
* The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice (August 11, 2019) / This short story is dedicated to the world’s refugees, one in every 113 people.

A busy though bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Levure littéraire, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, HerStry, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, Woven Tale Press, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group / Beguines, pushers of The BeZine of which I am managing editor. Email me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions or commissions

Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.

“Tygpress.com is temporarily out of service due to technical issues. will be back soon…

Tygpress.com was created with an intention to create a blog search site , but due to some techical issues, full contents of respective sites were being displayed instead of just excerpts as intended. We thank the complainants for bringing this issue to our notice and We are extremely sorry to the content owners.” tygpress.com

Tygpress.com was founded in June 2018 and is an aggregating site with posts from many of our blogs as its total content. At the time of this writing, the site is blocked and all you will see if you go to Tygpress.com is the statement I’ve included above.

.

So many kind and concerned bloggers have sent me alerts, which I appreciate. Thank you! Every post of mine was appropriated. I know it’s disconcerting (angering) and frustrating. This is not an expert opinion, but I have to say first that I think our copyrights are intact. I don’t think that’s an issue, though understandably it’s a primary concern. I noted that wherever there was a copyright notice by the content originator, it was included. On my site, I make conspicuous use of copyright for my own work and that of others and for this very reason. I have no worries about my fellow poets, writers and bloggers, it’s these wild-cards that come up that are a concern.

.

If you feel your copyright is compromised you can file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Takedown. Details on that are HERE.

.

I am as I write this awaiting an update from WordPress, which I’ll add to this post when and if one comes in. Having said that, Tygpress.com is not hosted by WordPress, so WordPress can’t take down the site. There are probably some things it can do. I hope we’ll find out. Meanwhile …

.

Digital Ocean is the host and you can email them with your complaint at dmac@digitalocean.com and let them know you want your work deleted from the Tygpress.com and Tygpress.com blocked from stealing your posts in the future should Tygress.com become active again.

.

The Domain Name is hosted by Go Daddy.

.

The site is owned by a gentleman from Kamataka, Bengaluru, India. It purportedly earns $24.00 U.S. a day and has an estimated value of $8,640.00 U.S. according to a couple of website stat and valuation sites and who knows how accurate these are.

.

I hope this is helpful. Feel free to add your thoughts and comments below.

Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.

“Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.” Mission Statement of Poets Against War.

Back around 2008 when I started blogging, Poets Against War, founded in 2003 by American poet Sam Hamill (1943-2018) in response to the war with Iraq, was still going strong and some of my poems were accepted for online publication. This was my baptism into socially engaged poetry. The thousands of poems that were contributed to the database from poets around the world are archived at a university, the name of which I’ve long forgotten. There were some other great efforts including Poetry of Solidarity, which made use of the easy and economical outreach the Internet offers. These two sites have gone the way of all things. The links I saved for them now get a 404 error code. Today we have 100,000 Poets (and friends) for Change, founded in 2011 by Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion.

Fortunately, I did keep notes on some of the poetry and activities I encountered in those early blogging days. What follows is a translation of a poem written by a child in Zimbabwe after the government made war on its own people in June 2005. 200,000 people became homeless. This poem was included in an article by American poet Karen Margolis in the now defunct Poetry of Solidarity.

nights with ghosts.
dear samueri, my friend
i will never see you again;
maybe i will.
but i shall not know
until father finds us a new address,
addresses!
we have none anymore.
we are of no address..
now that i have written this letter,
where do i post it to?
shall i say, samueri,
care of the next rubble
harare?

“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?'” American poet, Eve Merriam

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.

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Unless otherwise noted, the content of this blog, including the photos and text (poems, essays, stories, feature articles), are owned by Jamie Dedes. Links and short excerpts of a post (up to 5 lines) may be used with credit and a link back the post or you may use the Word Press reblog function.

Please do not copy, print or post the work of guest poets, writers and photographers without their permission. Leave a comment on the post and I’ll put you in touch.

Photographs of recommended products are generally the property of the producer.

Contact thepoetbyday@gmail.com with questions or for permissions.

The Poet by Day is an information hub for poets and writers. Featured each week are Calls for Submissions, Contests, Events and other useful news. Responses to WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPTS are published on the following Tuesday. SEND ANNOUNCEMENTS AND PRESS RELEASES to thepoetbyday@gmail.com

The BeZine fosters understanding through a shared love of the arts and humanities and all things spirited; seeks to make a contribution toward personal healing and deference for the diverse ways people try to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of a world in which illness, violence, despair, loneliness and death are as prevalent as hope, friendship, reason and birth. Submissions to Jamie Dedes bardogroup@gmail.com

Actively supports peace, environmental sustainability, social justice and a life of the spirit.

The BeZine

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The U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis launched a formal request for information as it drafts policy recommendations for Congress. The committee’s questions for stakeholders are posted at climatecrisis.house.gov/inforequest. The committee is slated to submit legislative recommendations to Congress in March of 2020 and a final report by December. It requests feedback by November 22, […]

The sad paragraphs in the paper offer no answers but they fade a little once I’m outside although there’s rain in the air and the sudden sun silvering naked twigs as I enter the park doesn’t last. I’m in the copse where rooks are flapping in quarrel as usual, when it stops me in my […]

Dotted like a navy formation, moving like a flotilla, the waves deceive the eyes, spinning like dervish. Our planet- green and beautiful may vanish. Offshore, the white blades against the blue sea, clean energy, harnessing wind, God given and free. Will no birds soar towards the azure sky? Under the noctilucent clouds, a lifetime of […]

to be like Greta Thunberg you must become yourself completely as though there were no prison of skin to stay inside no ego to say don’t try no doors to close the kind of bravery that moves lives is not second hand it is the ultimate it’s like an we can do it trip the […]